NHNZ rebrands and expands

In this its 25th anniversary year Fox-owned factual programming outfit Natural History New Zealand is officially to become NHNZ.

The company's md Michael Stedman told C21 that now is the time to lose a moniker which is, in essence, a description of what the production outfit used to be.

Over the past few years NHNZ has become more than a producer of natural history programming, said Stedman. {We looked at natural history and saw that that market was softening,{ said Stedman, and so the company aggressively moved into science, adventure, health and history programming.

Now with a varied slate of over 50 hours per year and a new outpost in Washington headed by ex-Travel Channel exec Michael Lennon, NHNZ is pushing shows like X-Force, which explores the science of extreme sports and will launch at Mipcom, and Treasure and Death, a combination of discovery and dramatic re-enactments.

NHNZ has also just opened an office in Beijing under ex-News Corp exec Rachel Yu. Set up to work with a range of Chinese filmmakers that Stedman describes as {extraordinary{, the division is already in production.

According to Stedman the company has doubled its output year-on-year for the past four years.